Electrical connections between daughter card and a mother board commonly involve connectors mounted on the leading edges of the daughter cards and matable with connectors mounted on the mother board, where the daughter card connector includes an array of contacts extending through a dielectric housing usually in a plurality of rows, and each terminal includes a contact section at each end such as a pin. Commonly the daughter cards are matable at right angles to the mother board, and the pin contact sections connected to the daughter card include a right angle bend so that the pin contact sections extend parallel to the mother board and are received into usually conductively plated through-holes of the daughter card and are soldered to form the connections to the circuits of the daughter card, while the opposed pin contact sections are received into socket contacts in the mother board connector.
In another form of connector, the contact sections associated with the daughter card are adapted to be soldered to pads of the circuits on the surface of the card, and include feet bent to extend parallel to the surface of the daughter card. Where the contacts comprise a plurality of rows, it is far more practical to provide contacts of different lengths for the different rows so that the feet all are disposed in a common plane, rather than space the pads of the daughter card extremely close together to accommodate connections to three rows of contacts, for example, corresponding to three rows on the mother board. But in such an arrangement the row of surface mount soldered terminations closest to the card's edge is exceedingly difficult to inspect visually as is essential to ascertain assurance of satisfactory solder joints, since they are obscured by the contacts extending to the terminations of the other rows.
It is desirable to provide a daughter card connector which is mountable to the daughter card in a manner not requiring an array of through-holes, which must be drilled through the card at precise locations.
It is also desirable to provide a daughter card connector which is mountable to a daughter card without requiring soldering of the terminations to establish electrical connections between contact means of the connector and the circuits of the card.
It is further desirable to provide such a connector which is easily demountable from the daughter card without desoldering of terminations, for repair or replacement.